Sunday, March 3, 2013

Updates

Alex practices the sign for "look".

The children have been enjoying our survey of Jacqueline Woodson's books. Many of Ms Woodson's books deal with difficult subjects such as, exclusion and loss. The books have lead to interesting class discussions. Several of Woodson's books take place in other time periods. The class has looked for clues in the text and in the pictures to help figure out when the story takes place. We are concluding our study of Woodson's books by reading her novel, Feathers. In the story, the main character's brother is deaf. The family uses sign language to communicate. I brought in some sign language card into school so that the children to learn more about this language.

Friday we surpassed our goal of getting 100 cans to give to a food bank. At "Morning Meeting", Mark told the school about the project and showed the 100 plus cans that were collected. Thank you to everyone for helping make this project successful. The first and second graders were very proud of their efforts to provide to families who need help to get food on their tables.

After seeing how a rock was turned into a snowman, I gave the children a project to find a new use for pocketed, clear plastic sheets (originally made for cards). I told them they could use any materials we had in the classroom for their creation.Many children used permanent to transform their sheets into: -lego organizers

-a storage for holiday cards -an alternative to a piece of paper-stained glass windowsOne child cut his into pieces and decorated the border of each piece to make small picture frames.Several children made weapons/protective devices:-invisible shields-hand protection-swords

A child stapled a white pieces of paper on the back to make a white dry erase board. After discovering the markers didn't erase easily, he opened one end so he could slide papers in and out to make a "computer".Another child cut out blue rectangles to fill each pocket to make a background. Then made a cat out of paper and taped it to the background.Who knew, one piece of plastic could be so many things.